We didn’t get to the Childrens Entertainer International Championships, but we were told that Michael J Fitch was excellent. The judges seemed to agree as they decided on the winners as:

1st Michael J. Fitch - £1,000 and Childrens Entertainer International Champion.
2nd Peter Greenwood
3rd Quentin Reynolds

David Blaine seems to be enjoying himself at the convention, as well as raiding the dealers hall for effects.

I will have to hand it to David that throughout the weekend end he’s been followed round by fans, and people wanting photos and autographs, he’s been posing for photos all weekend, and talking to people, and not once not accommodated the requests.

During the Daniel Garcia lecture (between buying him burgers) David did some close up for one of the younger convention goers, this I think possibly made the guys weekend.

It just goes to prove what an event Blackpool is, and it looks like David is really getting into the spirit of the convention and enjoying the magic and lectures.

There were lots of photos taken, and I asked Paul Craven to let me publish this one, as I thought it really captures how accomdating David Blaine was.

Daniel Garcia is one of the most funniest, and clever magicians I’ve see for a long some time. Most people will be aware of some of Daniel Garcia’s effects, but you really have to see Daniel work to really fully appreciate just how good his stuff is.

Daniel is not only talented, but hilarious and very off the wall. His lecture was even more brought to life when David Blaine dropped in to almost heckle Daniel. Ringing him on stage to ask him to restart his lecture because he was late, bring Daniel a drink and a burger, Daniel played up, enjoyed, and continued effortlessly with his lecture, and it was, as I’ve said before a realy joy to see magicians at the convention, having a great time and enjoying themselves.

Daniel performed a number of effects off his DVD’s and lecture notes, including some rubber band work, abitious card effects, and very obtainable, workable, and mind blowing stuff.

For magical value, entertainment, and pure comedy, this was a great lecture, and continued the days quality.

Daryls Lecture was of the expected high quality.

He started off with a triple colour rope routine with ‘pop off knots’ and got better the more he did.

Everyone enjoyed the lecture, and it was nice to see items that were extremely workable, along with the reasons from Daryl on his handling, and how they worked in situations.

It’s clear that Daryl thinks very hard about what he performs and more importantly how to put things into a commercial routine, including things like how to change a tricks handling to be more workable, and easy to ‘get ready’ with.

It’s always a pleasure to watch Joshua Jay perform, Oil and water, his six card repeat ‘Vegas Visit’, and closing with a wonderful Coins across.

Joshua is a such a polished performer, and his effects look so wonderful, yet work out to be so simple in their method.

There was pretty much something for everyone in Joshua’s Lecture

The International Close up took place in the Horseshoe area of the winter gardens, with Rudy Coby (labman!), Arthur Trace, Marc Oberon, Michael Ammar, Latko, Obie O’Brien, Ian Keable and Eugene Burger, all performing sets around the groups.

It’s not often you get to see such a top collection of names performing, and as ever Blackpool brought the cream of the crop.

There were three sessions allowing people to see the same sets at different times during the day, as you’d expect, the quality was superb, but of course, our favorite was Rudy Coby..

..and we got the ‘booger’ reference!!